La pluma que sueña, The Pen That Dreams
by columbine-and-asphodel
Summary: This is a sort of fanfiction of fanfiction. It's inspired by and written through the POV of a character in ongreenergrasses' fic, Our Lives In Objects, which should be read before this. It is a short ficlet of the life the pen lives after writing those important words and having its ink so quickly written from it- T because of light suggestive themes.


_A/N: Inspired by ongreenergrasses' fic, Our Lives in Objects. You ought to read it to understand this. It's a truly lovely fic, written by a truly lovely writer who's kept me afloat, so I do this in the hopes of making a tiny dent in the amount I owe her. It's an effort to thank her for her goodness to me. I truly hope I didn't mangle the pen's attributes too much...! Also, it's too fun to pass up!_

* * *

It has but a single drop of ink in its body, one tiny portion of life left inside it. For a pen who'd once been so of life and ambition, who'd drawn careless scribbles and written life-saving notes, it had become a silent, immobile utensil, trapped in a state of catatonia. While it had lived, or, more truthfully, while life had thrummed within it, it had been a solitary creature, one given to cynicism and misanthropy, feelings which have hardly changed, despite its inability to call up sufficient fervor.

However much it may have despised people, even feared them, and resented or ignored the existences of the items around it- other pens, pencils, toasters, beds, chairs, vanities, books, et cetera- the pen has come to recognize them as more than mere collections of obnoxious thoughts and futility. In its current state of half-death, it now sees the value of its comrades.

After writing the words which had brought together the doctor and the Other once more, it had thrown itself to the floor in a desperate attempt to save itself from dying and being dropped into the rubbish bin.

It hears the quiet, reverent whispers and the short eulogies performed by the few who had known it, for however short that time may have been, and it hears the muffled sniffles of a broken pencil too shy to speak up. The pen hears its soft words of awe and thanks, hears even the personal wish that it could have met the pen who'd fought for its life in a way that few ever had. The first time the pen had heard the pencil's words, they had brought with them a strange peacefulness, something that had never graced the pen before, and on cold nights in 221B Baker Street, or on days when there's only the sense of loneliness that so often lies upon the minds of those who are near death, it thinks of the peace that broken pencil had brought to it and finds a place in which it can be sheltered from the creeping gloom.

Sometimes the sounds of the bedroom filter into the pen's hiding place. They are happy, breathless sounds, noises made by men who burn with passion, rather like the Other's passion with the other man, only these stop sometimes, interrupted by rumbling laughter.

They make the pen swell with pride, reminding it that it was this pen in particular whose life's ink had reunited them, as though it had written their thoughts with hot glue instead of slick ink. The entire count of words it had written in the notebook is lost to the pain, however filled with unutterable emotion they had been, but it remembers well the count of the final words the doctor had written, even remembers the words themselves.

_Sod it._

_I love you._

_I'm not going anywhere._

At times when there is nothing to do but ponder its situation, the pen recalls those final words and thinks how they have become true for it as well as the man whose had guided the pen in scribbling them. The doctor stays because he loves the Other, and the pen stays because it loves life. That the doctor is free to live in movement while the pen is locked in paralysis is irrelevant; all that matters is that there is life within them.

The sound of footsteps interrupts the pen's ruminations. The Other and the doctor are rushing home, strung out and eager for the comfort of their home. Content in its place of obscurity, the pen sinks into a quiet trance as the men fall through the flat, in search of their own pleasure in the mindless mingling of limbs and breaths.


End file.
